Netanyahu: A tale of rise and fall

By Nabil Amr

When he was 35, Benjamin Netanyahu set his foot on the first rung of the climb to Israel’s top leadership positions — that was in 1984, when he was appointed permanent representative to the United Nations.

Since then a new and different phenomenon of leadership was born in Israel, centered on Benjamin Netanyahu, who held multiple ministerial portfolios, including Foreign, Finance, Health… and others, as if fate had prepared him to be a near‑permanent prime minister.

Netanyahu fashioned his distinctive standing ahead of all his predecessors, even some of the historic founders, through talents that none of his rivals — whether from his party or from other parties — possessed.

He is the crowned “king” of media and oratory, a fact his opponents acknowledge before his supporters do. He is the “magician” of domestic political maneuvering over its shifting sands, and his record contains many instances in which he destroyed anyone who dared challenge him, ended the careers of those who allied with him and threatened his leadership, or even thought of sharing it.

Alongside his cunning in managing Israel’s domestic life, he built a constant support wall in Washington, forged relations that approached alliance with Moscow, and developed economic ties with a country the United States objected to — China.

Strangely, he did not achieve accomplishments on the scale of Ben‑Gurion in founding the state, nor like Golda Meir, Dayan, and Levi Eshkol in wartime, nor like Menachem Begin in making peace with the major Arab state, Egypt.

What is striking, however, is that he set the record for serving as prime minister, exceeding all who preceded him among the historic founders and major achievers.

The sense of excessive power carries a defect that always brings its owner down, and that is what happened to Netanyahu when he ignored the ethical, professional and legal foundations that govern the office of prime minister. He committed serious violations that resulted in several corruption cases against him, each of which could have sent him to prison or out of office.

Most dangerously, he attempted to overturn the judiciary, stripping it of powers agreed upon since the state’s founding and transferring them to the Knesset, where the majority that supports him would allow him to evade judicial accountability.

That attempted coup — rooted in his sense of excessive power — produced reactions that nearly made his removal inevitable without waiting for scheduled elections. During that period Netanyahu calculated his survival in days or weeks.

Besides the talents that earned him the epithets “king” and “magician,” there was luck that brought the unexpected: on 7 October (Tishreen al‑Awwal) 2023 a major event occurred — which Hamas called “Al‑Aqsa Flood” — and Netanyahu awoke to find fate had granted him a new lease on life. All of Israel entrusted him with leading the inevitable retaliatory battle, and the United States, which had reservations about him, dropped them and came to his side; from its president to the last member of its senior leadership it opened the White House doors to him. His hour of fortune was completed by the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, placing America and all its resources at his disposal.

Through the war Netanyahu tried to regain his old rhythm as “magician” and “king”; he set an agenda for the conflict suitable for the early days of the emotional shock Israel felt after the surprise. Although this produced a majority backing the war, it split the country over his leadership of it. From there began a second decline following the failed judicial overhaul.

During his leadership of a war that remained unresolved, he persisted in treating the state and its institutions as if they were a militia subordinate to him, dragging them behind his private agendas. This produced unwanted consequences: the rift between him and the military leadership became public, and he lost his majority in Knesset polls. Politically, Israel’s relations with most of the world became strained and, in his handling, colored by a narrative of blood. At first Netanyahu relied on denial as the international shift against him and his war emerged, until he was forced to acknowledge the isolation and to voice fears of an arms and economic siege. He even addressed the Israeli public with simplistic proposals to escape the crises he had led Israel into, calling for increased financial investment in the media. At the most sensitive and embarrassing moments, Netanyahu himself produced a resounding failure with his reckless gamble of attacking Doha — a move that ran counter to his usual intelligence and cunning.

To make matters worse, that ill‑conceived operation failed completely, and even the United States, lenient toward him, could not contain the regional and global reactions it set off.

Netanyahu’s rise was like swimming with a favorable current; his fall became inevitable when the winds and storms blew against him, the most dangerous of which came from within Israel.